Imagine this: The envelope you’ve been waiting three months to arrive at your house is finally here. You race inside, your heart hammering, not because you’re out of shape, but because you’re terrified with anticipation. You throw all the other mail wherever—you don’t care where any of it lands—and quickly move to your coziest spot in the house, where you try to settle down, even though you can’t. You find your favorite chair, reach for that ice tea you’ve had sitting there beside your lamp since you first anticipated the letter’s arrival, take your sip, and then take your breath. Then you stare at the envelope, close your eyes, and get to work. You begin opening that envelope you’ve been waiting three months for. Your fingers twitch as they slide along the flap. The sweat dripping down to the tips is probably ruining ink inside. But you’re ready for the message it holds. You’ve waited nearly 90 days for it. It didn’t take you that long to even write the manuscript in which this letter addresses. You slip out the paper, unfold it, and open your eyes.

Then you drop the letter to your side and shake your head. Then you toss the letter in that drawer where the others live.

“Thanks for your submission, but this isn’t for us.”
-99% of literary agents you pitch your manuscript to

Well, that’s helpful, you may think in that sarcastic way you address any problem you face. You know sarcasm, that teddy bear you keep with you whenever anyone says something you find offensive, the thing you whip out to cope with stress caused by people who simply don’t understand your genius. We all know that teddy bear because we all carry around the same one. There are so many people who love to step on our dreams without giving a suitable reason that we become reliant on any teddy bear to get us through the nightmare, especially the one that makes us feel good because we think it’s making those who’ve wronged us feel bad. We like our avenging teddy bear more than our comforting bear, even if it doesn’t manage to bring back those people who gave us no helpful advice but a broken heart instead. Commiseration is therapy, up until the point that we give up on writing and become accountants because it’s easier.

But, we don’t really want to give up our dreams, so we pine for anyone who might care about our goals in life and do all they can to support us, just to wash out that sour taste of rejection from our mouths. Our cries for help lead to responses like:

“I don’t read fiction.”
-Your best friend

“I don’t read nonfiction.”
-Your other best friend

“I don’t read books.”
-Everyone else you know

Yet, we know it’s probably futile to get any help when we need it the most. We’re told that we live in a world full of readers, even though we can’t find a single one who wants to read what we’ve written. We fall back into that state of defeat, feeling worse than our protagonist feels the night the bad guy steals his girlfriend away. We poured our hearts and souls into this thing that nobody wants to leave a single comment about, positive or negative, helpful or useless. Nobody wants to give us validation, and it kills us inside.

Well, that’s because we’re asking the wrong people to help us.

First off, New York literary agents don’t know you, so they have no reason to talk to you. Don’t let them become your first line of literary feedback because you’ll be disappointed. They’re too busy sending out a couple hundred other rejection letters to authors just like you to give you any special attention. Granted, if they say anything other than “no thanks,” or really, just anything, then you probably have something special because, even though they may not have room for your work, they probably see enough potential in you to encourage you to keep going on the path you’re going, so that should be compliment enough. But you still won’t know how to improve, so it’s useless feedback.

You don’t want to ask your best friend, either, because even though your best friend cares, he or she won’t necessarily know how to give you feedback if you’re writing in a genre he or she doesn’t read in (if he’s a reader at all). If you’re writing a science fiction business book, and your friend watches a lot of reality television, he or she will probably take several months just to read through your book, and he’ll forget so much about what you’ve written that the only advice he can give you when he’s finished is that, “It’s good,” which isn’t helpful, either. That’s not even a decent ego boost. Anyone can tell you that without reading a word. They don’t even have to look you in the eye. They can be staring at their breakfast, noting how well their eggs were made that morning, and comment “it’s good.” You know they’re talking about the eggs. Don’t wait on your best friend to give you feedback. Keep searching.

Now, at this point you might be wondering why you should bother with feedback. If no one in your circle is willing to give you a serious answer, then why keep pounding at a broken drum? Well, the reason is because feedback, honest feedback, gives us an opportunity to become better writers. Feedback is that element in the writing process that alerts us to the problems that still linger in our text, even when we think we’ve addressed everything we can. Without feedback, our writing is blind. We need feedback, even if we can’t get it easily.

So, how do we get it if the people we care about won’t help us?

This is where we begin to search for online reader groups to give us those coveted responses.

Let’s look at four of them. I’ve provided links, so be sure to check them out once you’ve finished reading this article.

Perhaps the most popular among young adult readers, Wattpad is, in my opinion, the most sophisticatedly designed of the online writing forums, if not the hardest to get any attention for, as its popular writers suck up most of the readership. If you write anything other than young adult romance or fanfiction, you might have a difficult time making headway. But it integrates well with social media and looks really nice, and it gives you readership stats, which is helpful. It also lets you “like” each story and leave a comment below each chapter. So, even though I don’t care for it for my own works, as I don’t seem to write the kind of fiction its readers like (maybe that’s a clue that I need to start writing for new audiences), I still think it’s a good site worth visiting. You might even find your next favorite author there. You might even become someone’s next favorite author there.

FictionPress is an older, yet less sophisticated cousin to Wattpad (if they’re related, which I don’t think they are), in that it has similar analytics for detecting which types of readers are visiting your stories. I think the reviewer community is a little more active here, as well, based on what I’ve seen, but you’ll want to experience the differences for yourself. The design of the site is crude, but it’s functional. I also think it’s a better site for cultivating new fans, as authors here are more willing to help each other (again, based on my experience). Wattpad has the tech on its side, and I also like that Wattpad will let you use your real name (FictionPress requires a screen name, and doesn’t want your real identity seeping through—no idea why), but FictionPress has a higher likelihood for feedback, which is what this article is about, and why I prefer it to Wattpad. Both are worth trying out, but FictionPress has a wider participation rate for genres outside of young adult romance, which is also a plus.

Zoetrope (part of American Zoetrope) is one of the granddaddies of the online writing forums, and one of the only forums I know of to invite artists of any genre, including and especially screenwriting, to participate. I haven’t been here in about twelve years, and I have no idea if my stories are even still on here. But a recent visit shows me that the place is greatly updated to match with today’s social media needs and I’m tempted to come back. The great things about this site are 1.) You can’t submit a story until you’ve reviewed five others, so reviews are the driving force for this site, 2.) You can submit pretty much anything here, including song lyrics, 3.) You can participate in sponsored contests, 4.) You have a shot at making into Zoetrope: All Story, a prestigious literary magazine moderated by intelligent people, and 5.) The person responsible for this site is Francis Ford Coppola, the award-winning director of the Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now, the latter film which now apparently has a crowdfunding campaign for a video game version. The things you learn when you explore. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this site back in the day, and I highly recommend putting it on your list of places to test, especially if you write anything other than novels.

I have an account here, but I confess I haven’t used it yet. Of the four sites I’ve listed, this is the only one that has a payment plan, which I’m okay with, but not eager to use at the moment. My understanding is that readers on this site are more serious about feedback than the other sites, so the pricing plan is probably justified. But, like Zoetrope, the service is fueled by reviews, which means you need to be ready to dish it out more often than you expect to take it. Last I checked, you get two free postings and unlimited opportunities to read and review other people’s works. The paid plans increase your submission limit. Again, I wouldn’t list it in this article if I didn’t think it was worth checking out, so you should definitely check it out. But I’m putting it last because it’s the only one that requires money to get the most out of it, and I’d rather show you the free sites first.

Even though each site has its own rules and methodologies, the one thing you can be sure of is that readers use them, and you want to go anywhere where readers hang out.

Now, when using these sites, it’s important to realize that there are two types of feedback, and you can use both to your advantage.

Reader reviews are the more obvious forms of feedback because these will be more likely to tell you what works and what doesn’t. A good reviewer will highlight anything important (on a per chapter basis) that you should know. These same reviewers are speaking not to you, but to the community, so, while you’re learning about what’s wrong with your story, your other potential readers are learning about it, too. That can be a positive or a negative, depending on how many people are harsh reviewers, but because it’s honest feedback, it’s fine. Most of the people who read your work on these free reader sites aren’t going to remember you when they find you on Amazon sometime later, and even if they do, they’ll hopefully assume that you’ve fixed the problems that were addressed on the reader site, and won’t intentionally troll your hard work with one-star reviews. Anything’s possible, of course, but highly unlikely. If you want any kind of feedback, these sites are great places to start.

Note: Readers on these free sites are a lot like readers on Amazon. They’ll consume without talking about the product or acknowledging who they are. To ensure that you get reviewers for your stories on these free sites, you’ll need to give some reviews of your own. A large percentage of authors you review will offer you a review in return as a courtesy. Some of the above sites, like Scribophile and Zoetrope require you give reviews if you expect to get any. These reader sites are very karma-centric in that way. I’d advise reviewing many other people’s works before posting your own (or post your own, and then review a bunch right away). Bank your reputation and your readership early.

You may only get a handful of people to review your stories, but you’ll get plenty more to read them, if you market them well enough—even the free reader sites need some marketing love if you want to stand out among the thousands of other options that readers have. Fortunately, most (if not all) of these sites give you readership statistics, including how many have looked at your story and how many have gotten past chapter 1, 2, etc. Even if no one speaks up, you can still use these tools to get an idea on conversion rates for your story. So, if you have seven readers for Chapter 1 and no readers for Chapter 2 (which is the case for my story When Cellphones Go Crazy on FictionPress), then you know something is preventing them from moving on (my guess regarding my story is that the sections are too long). It’s not nearly as good as getting actual handwritten feedback, but it’s better than nothing.

Clearly these are geared more toward fiction writers, but you can still find online resources for getting nonfiction feedback. The most obvious place is a blog where your topic is also the central focus. You can also look for communities of people who are interested in your topic and solicit them for feedback. This is where sites like Reddit might come in handy. Reddit is pretty finicky about its social rules, but it’s a good place to research what people are interested in. If your nonfiction work answers the questions they have, then you know you’re on to something.

Now, at some point you’re going to release your book, and at some point you’re going to get reviews from your buyers (or downloaders, if your book is free). Just as I tell the college students I tutor prior to them turning in their essays, negative feedback from the instructor is still feedback. Learn from everything. If someone rates your book poorly, then learn why (don’t ask them though—there’s still a form of writer-reader etiquette you need to adopt that says never to complain about any review you’re given, at least not in public, and especially not online), then fix it, or do a better job with the next book. You can take everything you learn and apply it to your wheelhouse of knowledge. As the old saying goes, whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger, but if it does kill you, you probably won’t remember it anyway. Okay, I might’ve made up that second part.

As I discussed in Part 4, rejection is probable, but don’t let it scare you out of putting your work on display. When you write in a bubble, you are only good until it pops. Ask for feedback from people who want to read, and you’ll want to find those people in the places where readers dwell. If you don’t want to sign up for an online reader site like those mentioned above (or the manythatI haven’t mentioned), then maybe you can find readers at your local library. Maybe your library hosts a readers’ group. I have reservations about readers who don’t understand what makes a novel or nonfiction book work giving feedback to writers who also don’t understand how to make these things work. But, I do think that everyone knows what they like and what they don’t like, and if you’re writing in the hopes of building a readership, then it’s important to know whether you have something people want to read.

At the end of the day, feedback is for winners, not quitters. Don’t give up, even if your sarcastic teddy bear speaks the sweetest kinds of lies in your ears. It’s not worth it. You’ve got plenty to offer the world. Just get it out there.

Next week we’ll talk about platforms. Yay. Boo. Take your pick.

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In Part 4, we talked about how writing should be fun (the theme of this series). But that implies we should write only and always for ourselves, and that the moment it stops being fun, we should stop doing it. To that logic, I would say, we should stop taking care of our yards or helping our kids with their homework the moment we stop enjoying the process.

No, writing shouldn’t always be about fun. Sometimes it needs to be about business. Or expression, or something that may not necessarily leave us feeling warm and fuzzy inside, but will in some way leave us feeling vindicated for all the fiery knowledge that’s been heaped on us over the years.

But, whether we write for business or the heck of it should depend on why we’re writing, who we’re writing for, and what message we hope to convey (and how urgent it is to share that message with unsuspecting readers). Why are you writing? Or, if you haven’t started, why do you want to write?

I began writing as a way to explore my adventurous side, as I was getting too old for toys, and watching movies and playing video games ultimately limited my ability to freely explore. Sure, much of my imagination was sparked through watching futuristic action movies like The Running Man, which takes place in 2017, FYI. But sometimes I might find myself wondering what’s down the path the hero didn’t take, or what would’ve happened if Schwarzenegger had taken the contract to join the stalkers, etc. I started my writing journey to explore those dark corners that the mainstream wouldn’t show me and those epic events I could no longer simulate by throwing all of my action figures into a pile and see how many of them could survive the “Rumble by the Cliff Overlooking the Mile-long Drop into Lava.” Weirdly, it was an episode of The Jeffersons, where Florence, the maid, writes a detective story involving all of the show’s other main characters, that convinced me it was time to start writing for myself. It was in syndication by that point, but it happened to be on TV the day I was ready to move forward into storytelling, and it was enough to get me to break out the pencil and line paper and get to work. I was 13 at the time.

When I began writing, I did not have the business of writing in mind. I did not expect to share my work with the world, and I wasn’t even that interested in sharing with all but a few of my peers. I can’t remember if I was embarrassed or shy, but publicly displaying my story was not priority number one, and neither was displaying the dozens or so stories I’d written over the next ten years. Deciding on a creative writing track in college certainly forced me to get comfortable with letting basic strangers read my stuff, and taking a creative writing class in high school helped my productivity along—it also helped that the teacher would anonymously read student works to the class in such a way that we’d all get a laugh, and that getting picked for the public reading was an honor, not a curse; I daresay that that anonymous exposure was ego fuel, and made the prospect of having a readership more attractive, except for those times when classmates refused to critique my work because they thought it was too long.

Whether I recognized it or not, those early days of sharing my work exposed me to the reality of audience, and the importance of knowing who’s supposed to read what I’ve written.

Knowing our audience is imperative to all writing, whether we’re doing it for fun or for business. If our audience is ourselves, then we can probably get away with writing anything, for we are unlikely to write anything for fun that we wouldn’t also read for fun. But once we make the decision to share our work, then we need to understand the people who will be asked to read it.

Turning fun into business ultimately comes down to understanding the people we want reading our stuff. No one is going to buy anything we produce if we’re not giving them something they want to read (or watch, or listen to, or use, etc.). We can play in the playground all we want, but the moment we turn that playground into a staging ground for the next world war, we’ve ruined what was great about that playground, and the people whom that playground was designed for, the children, will no longer come around. That poor playground will get trampled by the wrong people. We don’t want that, right?

Regardless of our reasons for writing, we need to have an understanding of what we want to do with it when we’re finished. Ideally, we should know the answer to that before we start. Whether we keep it to ourselves or share it with the world, or limit it to someplace in between, the best thing we can do for our writing is to craft it in such a way that our intended audience will want to read it. And this doesn’t always mean that we should write in elevated language or elaborate scene-setting. It doesn’t always mean that we should wax eloquent the type of threading used to piece the hero’s spandex together or the heroine’s dress. Even if we have fun researching the composition of gunpowder before including all of our notes into the scene where the hero loads his weapon, it doesn’t mean those six pages of information need to be shared with our audience, especially if the scene requires heart-pounding action that moves at a clipped pace. Even if we like the descriptions of the clothing materials or gunpowder, there’s a good chance that we’re the only ones.

Okay, so how do we know if we’re harming the balance between business and fun, if what we’re writing is getting in the way of enjoyment for the reader, even though we ourselves may be enjoying every moment of it? Simple. Put someone else’s name on our work, shelve it for a few weeks, then come back and read it as a reader and not a writer. Do we still like that overblown description of gunpowder in that action scene that takes six pages to set up?

As I said in “The Importance of Managing Fun,” the author is the first reader. But if we want a second and third reader, then we may want to redefine our definition of “writing for fun” because writing for fun should lead to our audience reading for fun, and we may not achieve that goal if we write completely uninhibited. Some knowledge of structure, story fundamentals, understanding of vocabulary and grammar, and so on, will ultimately need a place in our boxes of writing fun if it’s to remain fun for everyone. If we neglect the essentials, we may find, unfortunately, that readers will neglect the stories we want them to read. So, even if we write for fun, we should still consider writing also for business, if for no other reason but to think of the future and the place our works have in that future. Just because Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t start his 2017 breaking out of prison to outwit murderous stalkers on national television to the amusement of Richard Dawson, doesn’t mean he didn’t still find his way onto the set of a reality show to the scrutiny of those he should entertain. We should always consider the future when putting together the fabric of our present.